The field of this invention relates to medical instruments and more specifically to a surgical instrument to facilitate the taking of tissue specimens.
Medical practioners as a regular practice extract tissue sections by an instrument inserted into the body through a natural opening to remove tissue from an inaccessible region of the body. Specifically, the use of such a biopsy instrument is quite common within the vagina to remove tissue from the female uterine cervix. A common form of such an instrument employs a pair of movable jaws with the edge of one jaw including a cutting edge and that same jaw including a cavity. The first jaw is to be movable into the cavity in a close fitting arrangement. Therefore, with a piece of tissue located between the jaws and the jaws moved together, that tissue will be cut and removed.
With the tissue having been removed, the medical practioner removes the instrument and opens the jaws. The tissue section is usually quite samll with also the cavity of the instrument being quite small. The medical practioner must then remove the section of tissue from the cavity. The removal procedure for removing the tissue is by employing a toothpick or an equivalent device to "dig" the tissue out of the cavity.
Having to remove the tissue in this manner from the cavity frequently causes the tissue to come out in different sections and also causes undersirable tissue damage. In the performing of the biopsy, it is preferable that the tissue is as undamaged as possible so that the tissue is represented to be in its original state for the subsequent pathlogical examination.
Previously, there have been various types of instruments for taking tissue specimens. Essentially, each of the instruments of the prior art employ the use of a pair of jaws and by the closing of these jaws a tissue specimen is removed and is thereby located within a cavity of the instrument. Upon the instrument being removed from the inaccessible area, the jaws are then opened and the tissue sepcimen removed. Because the heads of these instruments are very small and likewise the cavity being very small, the tissue specimen is very small and cannot be very easily grasped. Therefore the medical practitioner has to "dig" the tissue out from the cavity usually by a toothpick, tweezers or other similar instrument.
Prior to this invention there was no known instrument which facilitated the removal of the tissue specimen upon the jaws of the instrument being open so that the tissue specimen was automatically removed from the cavity.